The present invention relates generally to the field of data processing, and more particularly to constructing an application topology data structure in the presence of instrumented and non-instrumented nodes.
Transaction tracking technologies focus on tracking composite applications across multiple technologies, protocols, domains, and operating systems. Tracking is often achieved by instrumenting targeted software with tracking agents which generate tracking events at strategic points in an application flow. Collected tracking events can be analyzed to determine application metrics and topology.
One of the challenges for transaction tracking is topology building. Making the necessary associations between a request and a response from an application in one domain with the corresponding request and response in an adjacent domain can be difficult. This problem can be compounded when some domains are not instrumented. Non-instrumented nodes may be present in a scenario where data is traveling from an instrumented node to a secure server that cannot be instrumented and therefore does not provide any application monitoring information. In cases where domains are not instrumented, data from adjacent instrumented domains can be used to infer data about non-instrumented domains.
Consider a scenario where a very large number of domains are being monitored with a mix of instrumented and non-instrumented domains in a cloud-based environment. The tracking/monitoring data associated with the monitored domains is very large. The challenge is to process this data quickly and efficiently to produce performance metrics and application topologies.